


I know myself

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Mage Fenris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3636159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Him, a mage.</p><p>Merely the idea gives him a shudder and he swallows more wine, as if that will change the reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know myself

 

_This isn’t a young love._  
_I know you_  
_and I don’t._  
_I’m pouring  
_ _a second cup of wine._

— Jennifer Barber, from ‘A Poet of Medieval Spain’

 

 

 -

 

 

The fire hot and warm over there, and here, the couch is worn through that the soft red velvet is gone to leave the brown canvas weave behind. It is worn so thin that when Fenris sits he can feel the wood of the frame through the cushions. Rain through the window always left open, still open from when, in the aftermath of that fight when they’d met, Bethany opened it to let out the stench of burned Fade. He has not closed it.

At first the leaving it was not out of deference to her and more out of a tired bewilderment - no one told him to close the window and so he never did. Now, rusted open, and he leaves it. Rain dripping on the sill, turning the wallpaper into mould.

There is wine in his hand. Heady, heavy, bottle not suited to this task but carrying it out all the same.

Years, see. Years and he is here. He is here and he is stuck, perhaps.

If he walks outside - he will not, but if he walks outside into the mess of the courtyard meant to be his (to be Danarius’, their ownership too much the same, what is one is the other’s and Fenris touches fingertips to the bruise in his thigh wondering how he could ever believe that this skin was not his, entire) - if he walks outside into the mess of the courtyard meant to be his, though he doesn’t quite believe it, doesn’t exactly want it, he could look up to see the light of Hawke’s house.

Family, and a skip away.

There were always whispers in his mind, memories half there, a dream almost forgotten, wavering on the edge of his vision like he’s suffered a concussion and cannot exactly remember where he is. A sister (not Hawke), a family (without Sebastian), no brother (where is Donnic?) - this whole person he was. A fake, a dream, someone telling him a story so many times it is familiar but it is not _him_.

Similar, slightly, to how he recalls his days in Tevinter. Certainly, that person was him. Certainly, there are no other memories to fit in that space, but he cannot quite believe. How did he - this person, who he is now - he would never have bowed in front of that man (knees bruised from the weight of him kneeling so long). He can put his hand into a person’s chest and squash their heart even as it tries to beat, he can carry a sword like a feather despite its weight. He can cut the head off qunari, he can tear apart the sky, he thinks. He can feel that. That strength. It tastes like iron on his tongue, hard between his teeth.

He would never bow.

And yet, there they persist, memories stuck in a circle wearing lines in his skull. A past he does not agree with but apparently lived. And more -

The hand that is not holding the bottle of wine looks the same as it always did. Lines, a scar between his knuckles, a blister forming where he thought he was done with blisters, palm a softer yellow-brown to the dark skin on the upper side.

He can do magic.

Him, a mage.

Merely the idea gives him a shudder and he swallows more wine, as if that will change the reality.

A burst of magic the wrong colour blue to be his lyrium and no mage with them that day, it was Varric who touched him on the shoulder and he flinched, hard, a recoil as stomach-bred as if he were a slave again fearing the whip.

There were many things in his life he never wanted. Not a choice, not properly, and mostly he feels like a bull tugged by a ring through his nose: follow or suffer. Take a step or don’t, but soon staying there will hurt. Choices are not choices if the roof’s about to collapse.

Perhaps (a thought he allows himself so long as he looks at it sideways, looks at the shadow it casts rather than the words themselves), perhaps this is why he ever survived. A mage-slave was rare, but an elf-mage was cheap enough to be sacrificed in yet another experiment.

And so -

More wine. No thoughts. This is not something he cares to consider.

Hawke had been suitably shocked. That was nice to swallow; comforting, to see his own emotions some place beyond his own skin.

Reasonable, too, that he has never learned this about himself, a skill he’d never been told and never thought to test. And how? He has no idea how to replicate, and to ask Anders is incomprehensible, to ask Merrill is - more suitable, maybe, and yet.

The problem is not with the asking, it is with the question. Even within his own mind he cannot parse the words. That is no sentence he has ever considered needing to form.

He drinks again, and drinks more. The rain continues to fall and this problem continues to persist. This is not leaving him. He was created with lyrium, forced into this shape, poured and made to set so now changing is a struggle, but this. He was born with this.

He does his very best to forget about it.

 

 

No one brings it up. A relief, truly, for this to be not discussed in a group of people around a table worn by the weight of their elbows, memories scratched into the wood. This group talks about everything, never forgets anything, what is one person’s problem is carried by the whole, but Fenris has half-lucid dreams, waking constantly to the complete black of his room and terrified of what he is. This is not brought into the daylight. This, they keep behind their lips.

What other secrets is he holding from himself?

Protection from what he is he understands, but protection he does not want. He wants to have everything, wants to know everything. This is his own body, his own mind. Surely there cannot be more hidden away for him to discover in some uncomfortable future.

Beginning again to recoil from physical touch he knows that Sebastian wants to ask, knows that Donnic has already asked but Fenris pretended to be distracted by a flurry of birds overhead and Donnic did not ask again.

Denial, perhaps, and lingering. This is not true if he does not acknowledge it, but he has not touched the Fade since. He has never made a habit of using his lyrium, but now it is more a rule, silent, never exactly spoken but there all the same.

 

 

The anger comes watching Merrill cheerfully light a torch in one of the caves down by the coast. How is she so easy with it? She was born and bred on it, never told it was a curse, never told to hush it up, hustle it away. Even _Anders_ , Maker, what a thing, what man to make a deal with a creature not even close to alive, but even he touches magic as easily as his dinner, second nature, second skin.

Fenris is angry. Another thing stolen. Another choice taken away.

He was never allowed to learn this.

Perhaps, he reasons, there is a way around this. A half-tranquility. Or, even - his lyrium, that has harmed him. Destroyed his touch with the Fade so he is a mage in memory _only_ , a forgotten past that he will never exactly regain, singing songs with his mother lost to history just like this. That accident was merely that. He is not mage, he is nothing different.

He will forget this, also.

It does not matter.

 

 

It happens again.

It happens while Isabela stands slightly too close and Merrill at a distance. In Tevinter Fenris did not often see children first learning their magic, but on occasion he did. They were half-wild, unruly attempts like a kid with a sword but only if the sword was on fire and more realistically a chained morning-star laced with some horrendous poison - it was magic. Fenris cannot find the right metaphor, the right round-about way to pretend like he had accepted this.

He burns Isabela and Merrill both in the same movement, arm flung out to balance himself as he swings his sword. Wild and uncontrolled, something he has never been, and the shame burns deep.

Merrill falls with a cry so unexpected the battle falters, even their opponents pausing in shock. It is enough time that Isabela, skin already blistering, can leap with both blades out to end it all fast as she can.

No one looks at Fenris on the trip along the beach. The city looms, and he feels sick to his stomach. Almost, he wants to flee. A suitable solution, nearly, to avoid the questions, to avoid that look that even now Isabela is giving him. What is this thing that he is, that he has not become because he always was.

He feels like a child, parents discussing him in whispers and him consumed by guilt he does not know how to handle.

 

 

From there he sinks. He has sunk before, has seen this road. He knows the depths of his own despair, knows what ideas linger in his brain to float to the surface when he does not check their chains. He knows.

(He did not know this. He did not know the taste of magic, the taste of it bubbling from within, he did not _know_.)

Cold and quiet the mansion settles around him, him all alone. Better for him to be around people, he is aware of this but does not care. Let him fall. Let him tumble into the pit. He will stay there.

It is almost more than he deserves.

 

 

There is a knock at his door which he ignores. Blood on his fingers which he ignores. Sword sharpened, armour unbuckled, he goes to bed unable to contemplate dinner. He has hated many things, but never thought he would hate himself.

 

 

There is a scar on his ankle, just low enough that he can push up his leggings to worry at it, curled on the faded red velvet in front of a fire he has not lit. When this will end he does not know. He is tired of it, but where is the out? He can never escape himself.

Isabela’s burns have healed and Merrill almost immediately appeared as if she’d never been touched. Her, used to magic, easily absorbing it (a demon, Fenris allows himself to whisper in his mind, a demon consorting, tempting, offering this solution to such a little problem).

In the Chantry there is a tranquil assisting in the library. Fenris has seen her only at a distance, and recoils automatically at every hint of her vacant face, her steps purposeful without person. There is no brain in that body, nothing left. He does not want that; he has been that, and will never be that again.

Mages have a connection with the Fade that has been burned into Fenris, and even if tranquility would work it would not work, not with what he is, and in any case he does not want - !

Wanting is useless.

What-ifs are useless.

He can eat his tongue on what-ifs, and he’ll still be left alive.

His decisions have never mattered so why would this? Why would any creature listen to him, truly listen to him, and give him what he asks for, pure, clean, no strings, no lies. A what-if is a dream, a daydream, even, something to lose himself to but no place he can stay lost.

 

 

His own face blinks at him from the scratched glass of the mirror. He is already so old and there is so much he knows, and so much he does not know. Reasoning there is only one constant in his life he holds his hand out, palm up.

He will learn this.

He will learn himself.


End file.
